Naked blonde walks into a bar with a poodle under one arm, and a two-foot salami under the other…

Prompted by the arrival of Bear McCreary's Battlestar Galactica Season 4 soundtrack album, I ended up discussing the season finale with jailnurse last night. During the conversation I came to realize why I wasn't as disappointed by the series finale as everybody else seemed to be. It's actually pretty simple: what I was caught up in was the emotional arcs of the characters, not the pseudo religious aspects.

The frustration most people seem to have towards the finale had more to do with the explanations or lack thereof of Head Six, Head Baltar the nature of Starbuck and the visions various characters have had over the course of the series and somehow tying all of those elements of the show together. And yet, while I did enjoy the show for the drama, action and the space opera elements, I just never really invested myself into the mystical mumbo-jumbo, and so when that element of the series never went anywhere it didn't really bother me so much. I was more interested seeing such moments as the Galactica going out fighting, Laura die with dignity, the inevitable parting between Kara and Lee and the like. Frankly, I was satisfied with how all of those things were handled by "Daybreak," and was surprised by how moving some of the other scenes were as well (e.g. Kara's farewell to Sam).

Of course, Bear McCreary had a lot to do with those scenes being as effective as they are, and I had been listening to the Battlestar Galactica Season 4 discs all day yesterday, but I took a short break to add the FSM release of music from the television series Cain's Hundred. I actually put it in my cart by accident when I ordered Maurice Jarre: Concert Works, but decided to take a chance because it featured music by the Great and Powerful Jerrald Goldsmith (according to the liner notes, he had himself credited in this manner because his mother didn't like seeing the less formal "Jerry" that was and would remain his professional name for the rest of his life) and one episode score by Morton Stevens, so I figured it couldn't be that bad.

And it wasn't. It was, however, chock full of prime Goldsmithian moments in the vein of Contract On Cherry Street, L.A. Confidential and The Detective. The older I get, the more I appreciate Goldsmith's more staccato sound of the 60s and 70s as opposed to the more lush orchestrations he would employ from the 80s until the end of his career, and this album certainly satisfies on that level. The Morton Stevens score is quite good too. Here's hoping that maybe one day we'll get more of that composer's music out there, as his contribution to Masada was quite substantial and his music from Hawaii Five-O is an instantly recognizable classic!

F A R E W E L LJOHN HUGHES1 9 5 0 — 2 0 0 9

Everyone lamenting the loss of John Hughes is harping on his more serious movies. For my money, the funniest and most repeatable was 'Weird Science.' Here is one of those "rewind it thirty times" belly laugh moments: